Fans are petitioning Microsoft to bring back the restrictive DRM policies previously planned for the Xbox One, asking for a return to online check-ins and demolished ownership rights. Elsewhere, dogs around the world are aski...

[Editor's note: As I indicated in the third paragraph, I assumed that blocking the phone number on the forums has likely been a long-standing practice. As ZiggyMoff posted in the comments, Valve does something similar -- repl...

Last week we debated over which of the Dead Space games was most worthy of a trophy, and it was great reading through your comments that brought up gameplay, visuals, scare factors, and other elements to judge the series on. ...

The launch of a survival-based zombie MMO should be a joyous occasion, with children singing songs of gratitude and greatness. With The War Z's arrival on Steam, however, the only songs being sung are those of deceit and betrayal.

According to users (and the many tips we received!), The War Z defrauds customers by lying about key features and promising things that aren't even in the game. The game's store page makes many claims, most of which are said to be untrue.

"Hammerpoint is very deceptive with the information about the game, verse what is actually being provided and sold to us gamers," writes a very stern user review. "They want you to believe the game is something it's not. An example is the fabricated screenshots on the Official War Z Steam page. Those are all in fact not of actual in-game footage. Instead, those were staged which is confirmed by the developers themselves in a past interview.

"It's made to look like there are massive hordes of Zombies that you're trying to stay alive against. The truth is, turn those zombies into other survivors attempting to kill you and it would lean more towards the truth."

Those who love videogames deeply enough will learn to hate them.
There are two sides to this industry -- one worth cherishing, the other worth nothing more than scorn. Like a certain coin-flipping supervillain, the game industry has two faces, and it is our duty to support one side while despising the other.
If we truly love videogames, we must accept that they deserve to be hated.

[Update: Ubisoft has publicly acknowledged the security flaw, and has issued a patch for all affected games. The patch will be a forced game update, and it's recommended to be run with your browsers closed. A new version of the Uplay installer is also available on its official site.

Ubisoft is yet to actually apologize for putting its customers at risk.]

In today's episode of "Publisher's hurting consumers in order to help themselves," Ubisoft may have put gamers at serious risk with its Uplay DRM service. According to programmer Tavis Ormandy, major Ubisoft titles have a backdoor that can be used by malicious websites to take control of your PC.

Uplay installs a browser plugin -- without warning the user -- which sites can exploit to gain access to your machine. It's highly recommended that anybody who has downloaded an Ubisoft game locate this plugin and delete it. It's commonly believed that this will eliminate the risk to the user. Search in your browser's add-ons/plugins section for "Uplay" and delete that sucker. It was initially believed to be a rootkit, but that is not the case.

A list of games with the issue can be found below (courtesy of Rock, Paper, Shotgun), though personally it'll be a cold day in Hell before I let Ubisoft's games on my computer. Not just for this -- I'm frankly sick of that publisher'sattitudetoward the PCmarket. I think it's easier if we all just pretended it was a console-exclusive publisher.

Meanwhile, of course, anybody who pirated these games ought to be playing risk-free, unpunished for they did not commit the crime of being a customer. Good going, Ubisoft! There are words that would have to be invented in order for me to adequately vocalize my disgust.

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Attention ...

A while ago, Electronic Arts landed itself in hot water after locking one of its customers out of Dragon Age II due to a transgression committed on EA's forums. While the situation was eventually resolved, it seems EA never s...